First Look: Orbit Rocket Race 5000

A Livingdice spy attended Neoncon and brought back tales of a new game called Orbit: Rocket Race 5000 from Forty-two Games. My spy described it as a fun game, so I contacted 42 Games for some more information about what they were up to with Orbit and Forty-Two Games. Here is their response

Orbit is a fast paced, strategic game where space racers attempt to win the Rocket Race 5000. Essentially, the first player out of cards wins the race. Utilizing special “tools”, space racers are able to “cheat” to win the race. These tools are represented by 24 special cards throughout the 120 card Orbit deck. We wanted to build a game where every card in the deck was powerful in it’s own right. We achieved this by adding the aforementioned special cards, the rest of the cards in the deck have a wild side on them. That’s a lot of wilds! By matching the colors on the cards, players are able to maneuver their way around the space track.

The game is quite ingenious as it tailors itself depending on the group of people playing at any given time. We have had 4-6 year old children play with senior citizens without any issues due to the age gap. Many people consider Orbit a conversational game as they are able to talk and have a good time while giving the game a minimal amount of attention. Other players take Orbit very seriously and consider it essential to play each card in the correct place in order to maximize the potential of their hand. One of the features of Orbit is the ability to take as many turns as possible using the cards dealt to you. For the longest time the record for most turns taken was seven until it was beaten last weekend with nine!

Orbit was inspired by a much larger game that my brother Benj Hamilton created awhile back. My father, Doug Chadwick saw Orbit as a separate game and together they started fleshing the mechanics out. When I came on-board last September I saw the need to add a grief factor to the game and introduced the special cards, tokens and artwork. We attended the Phoenix Comicon earlier this year and decided to play test Orbit with the public and were astounded when we heard “Can we buy this now?” We have been working hard since then to make Orbit and 42 Games a reality. That reality will come true in the next month when Orbit goes into production for a tentative release time of early next year. A zombie version called Zorbit is also in the works.

I would like to mention that 42 Games is not going to be a one hit wonder, we have 20 unique games in development which cross several genres. We are a family of gamers running a gaming company, we see an opportunity to do things right for gamers all over. We will also be taking the suggestions of gamers and fans into account when it comes to the creation of our games.